Origin and historical development

During the second half of the 2nd millennium bce, two groups of culturally and linguistically related peoples who called themselves arya (“nobles”) migrated from the steppes down into the Middle East, the Iranian plateau, and the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. One group settled in Anatolia and India. The other settled in greater Iran. These people were originally seminomadic pastoralists whose chief economic base was cattle, primarily bovines but also sheep and goats. They bred horses, which they used for riding and pulling chariots in warfare and sport. It is not at all clear how rigidly their society was originally segmented. There were specialists in religious matters, and men who could afford horses and chariots were reckoned as warriors and leaders. By the Achaemenian period there developed a more rigid division of society into four basic classes: priests, nobles, farmers/herdsmen, and artisans. Society generally was patriarchal, and male dominance was strongly reflected in the religion. Like the ancient Israelites, as the Iranians occupied the land, they became increasingly dependent upon agriculture and settled in villages and towns. During this process they were certainly influenced by the indigenous populations, of whose religion almost nothing is known, except by inference from elements of Iranian religion that have no reflex in the Veda or among other Indo-European-speaking peoples.

Owing to their common origin, Iranian and Indo-Aryan religions are very similar. From a comparative study of both groups, it is possible to reconstruct, in general features, the early forms of Iranian religion for which there is no direct documentation. The pantheon, similar to those of other Indo-European-speaking peoples, embraced a large number of deities, both female and, predominantly, male. Some of these were personifications of natural phenomena, others of social norms or institutions. There appear to have been two major groups of deities, the daivas and the ahuras. Daiva (literally “heavenly one”; Vedic deva, Latin deus) is derived from the common Indo-European word for “god,” and this is the meaning it has in the Vedas. Among many Iranians and in Zoroastrianism the daivas were regarded as demons, but this belief was not pan-Iranian. The ahuras (“lords”; Vedic asura) were certain lofty sovereign deities, in contradistinction to the other deities called bagha (Vedic bhaga, “the one who distributes”) and yazata (“the one to be worshipped”). At the head of the pantheon stood Ahura Mazdā, the “Wise Lord,” who was particularly connected with the principle of cosmic and social order and truth called arta in Vedic (asha in Avestan). Closely associated with him was another ahura named Mithra (Vedic Mitra), the god who presided over covenants. In Iran there were two gods with martial traits quite similar to those of Vedic Indra, Mitra, and Vrthraghna. Among female deities the Earth, Spantā Aramati, and the sacred river, Ardvī Sūrā, were most prominent. A sacrificial ritual yazna (Avestan yasna, Vedic yajna) was performed in which fire and the sacred drink hauma (Avestan haoma, Vedic soma) played an important part. The principal officiant at the sacrifice was the zautar (Vedic hotar).

As with other ancient religions, the cosmological dichotomy of chaos and cosmos figured in both myth and worldview. The most prominent and unique feature of ancient Iranian religion was the development of dualism, primarily expressed in the opposition of truth (arta) and falsehood (drug, drauga). Originally confined to ideas of social and natural order opposed by disorder and chaos, a dualistic ideology came to permeate all aspects of life. The pantheon was divided between the gods and demons. Especially under the influence of the magi, members of a priestly tribe of Median origin, the animal kingdom was divided into two classes: beneficent animals and noxious creatures. Even in vocabulary there developed a system of “ahuric” and “daivic” words for such things as body parts: for example, the word zasta was used for the hand of a righteous person and gava for the hand of an evil person. It is important to note that this was not a gnostic system, like those that flourished in the Middle East during the early centuries of the Common Era, as there was no myth of evil matter coming into being through the corruption and fall of a spiritual being.

Except for a mostly legendary line of eastern Iranian kings, the kavis, the last of whom was Zarathustra’s patron Vishtāspa (Greek Hystapes), the only historical information on the relation of religion to political authority comes from the Achaemenian period in western Iran. The ideology of kingship was closely tied to the supreme deity, Ahura Mazdā, through whose will the kings ruled. The Achaemenian kings had to contend with the power of the Median priesthood, the magi. Their origin is unclear, but, according to Classical sources, they presided at all religious ceremonies, where they chanted “theogonies.” That they were deeply involved in politics is seen from the attempt of the magus Gaumāta to seize the throne upon the death of Cambyses II. Although Darius persecuted the magi, they remained powerful and eventually became the official priesthood of the empire. They were probably responsible for articulating a thoroughly dualist ideology and contributing to Zoroastrianism its zealous preoccupation with ritual purity. In addition, they were famous throughout the ancient world as wonder-workers.

Mythology and cosmology

Because all the sources for Iranian myths, whether those of Classical authors or indigenous texts, are post-Zoroastrian, it is often difficult to discern what elements of the myths are Zoroastrian innovations and what elements are inherited. It is particularly hard to resolve this problem owing to the nature of Zoroastrianism itself as a religion that has always drawn heavily on already existing ideas and that has accommodated itself to various forms of Iranian religions. As is the case with ancient religions generally, Iranian religions did not possess one unified collection of myth. What one finds are fragments of a wide variety of myths exhibiting many variations on common themes.